1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for allowing an elongated product in which a material for sausage or other foodstuff is stuffed in a casing, or linked products formed by twisting the elongated product, to be suspended sequentially in the form of loops from a plurality of retaining members that are moving.
2. Description of the Related Art
Casing products filled with a material are subjected to heat treatment or similar processing in an ensuing process, depending on the type of foodstuff used as a filler. Consequently, the casing products are generally suspended from a bar-shaped member called a smoking stick in a series of loops and are brought into a heat treatment chamber. In order to allow the series of loops to be suspended from the smoking stick, the casing products are conventionally suspended in the form of loops from a plurality of retaining members that are moving, and the smoking stick is then inserted through the loops so as to receive the series of loops. One such looping apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 43210/1982, for instance, is known.
The arrangement of this known apparatus is such that a plurality of outwardly oriented supporting hooks are provided at predetermined intervals on an endless conveyor traveling in a horizontal plane, and sausages formed into a chain of linked products are dropped and supplied by a supplying conveyor toward the path of the supporting hooks and are sequentially retained by the supporting hooks, thereby allowing the chain of linked sausages to be suspended in the form of loops.
However, the sausages that drop and move with force have the characteristic that their moving direction is difficult to change abruptly when they are retained by the supporting hooks. Therefore, with the known apparatus constructed as described above, since an attempt is made to retain the chain of sausages with each supporting hook in a free space, the chain of linked sausages located between the supplying conveyor and the supporting hook swings in conjunction with the movement of the supporting hook owing to the contact pressure at the time of engagement by the supporting hook. Hence, there are many cases where the linked sausages drop while sliding as they are down the supporting hook without being retained securely. The greater the speed of the sausages being dropped and supplied, or the shorter the length of the sausage links, the more noticeably this trend appears.
Sausages having a long link length have the characteristic that they are liable to be bent midway in the link, particularly in cases where their diameter is small. With the above-described known apparatus, the sausages supplied from the supplying conveyor drop in a free space, so that the path of the dropping sausages constantly changes unstably owing to the movement of the supporting hooks with the sausages suspended therefrom. As a result, the positional accuracy of the portions to be retained is low, and retention is likely to occur such that the sausage links supported by the supporting hooks are bent midway in the links. The higher the dropping speed of the sausages, the lower the positional accuracy of the portions to be retained.